Water issues pushing Weld's last large-scale potato grower out of the state

Tribune file photo
An employee sorts through potatoes as they make their way to trucks at the Strohauer Farms potato shed in LaSalle. Harry Strohauer says it is easier to fly to and from fields in another state and haul farm equipment than it is to grow potatoes near his Weld County home due to some of Colorado's water rules.

Tribune file photo
An employee sorts through russet potatoes on a conveyor belt at the Strohauer Farms potato shed in LaSalle. Harry Strohauer has moved about 500 acres of his potato growing operation to New Mexico this year.

Tribune File Photo
Jason Wissler picks potatoes on a harvest day at Strohauer Farms in LaSalle. Harry Strohauer is moving about 500 acres of his potato-growing operations to New Mexico this year due to water issues.

Tribune file photo
An employee pushes potatoes through a water bath at the Strohauer Farms potato shed in LaSalle. This year will be the first time the Strohauer family has grown crops outside of Weld County since it came here in the 1940s.

Potato acres disappearing across the state

Jim Ehrlich, executive director of the Colorado Potato Administrative Council in Monte Vista, said shortages have had a major impact on growers in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, where more than 90 percent of the state’s potatoes are grown.

Since the Colorado drought of 2002, the southern part of the state has had little relief, and because of that, restrictions on groundwater-pumping have been put in place and potato acreage has decreased significantly.

In 2002, Colorado altogether was planting about 77,800 acres of potatoes, but is only expected to plant about 53,000 acres this year, largely due to tight water supplies in the San Luis Valley, Ehrlich said.

The state’s potato production from 2002 to 2011 steadily dropped from about 3 billion pounds to 2.3 billion pounds — about a 25 percent decrease.

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Weld County is still home to potato festivals and dotted with spuds-growing artifacts, but the local tater industry has little to contribute anymore to the area’s vast legacy.

A shell of what it once was, Weld’s potato acreage took another hit this year as the last large-scale grower of the crop — Strohauer Farms in LaSalle — plans to raise half of its potatoes outside of the state, citing water issues as the reason for doing so.

The Potato Day Festival for about 25 years has been a staple of autumn activities in Greeley — a community where the potato is credited as being the first commercially viable crop locally grown.

But since 1987, Weld County has gone from growing 3,855 acres of potatoes on 66 farms to what’s expected to be about 550 acres this year, grown by just two farmers.

Harry Strohauer — owner of Strohauer Farms, which grows nearly all of the remaining potatoes in Weld County — and others point the finger at water issues to explain why spuds production has decreased so sharply.

Strohauer said he’d rather keep his crops growing near LaSalle — the only place his family has farmed since coming here in the 1940s — than in New Mexico, where he’ll plant 500 of his 1,000 total potato acres this year.

The climate along the northern Front Range and his soil close to home are ideal for growing the crop, and Weld’s proximity to large markets (the Denver metro area) and the infrastructure (Interstate 25, U.S. 34 and U.S. 85) add to the local benefits. “But the truth is, with how we manage things in this state, we just don’t have a reliable source of water anymore,” said Strohauer, who’s an executive committee member for the National Potato Council and has spearheaded Strohauer Farms since he was 16 years old, following his father’s death.

As the region’s population has grown, so have the overall demands for water.

The tightening of water supplies and the uncertainty of the resource in dry years has become too much for some farmers, including potato growers, who stress that potatoes are an “unforgiving” crop if not fully irrigated — especially if you’re trying to meet the standards of King Soopers, Whole Foods and others, as Strohauer is.

But making life particularly difficult now, Strohauer says, is the inability to pump groundwater wells.

In the mid-2000s, augmentation requirements were made more stringent in Colorado.

Augmentation water is required to make up for depletions to the aquifer. Over time, pumping water out of the aquifer depletes surface flows in the basin needed by senior, surface water users.

Prior to the state’s rule changes in the mid-2000s, farmers were only augmenting for about 10 percent of the water they pumped out of the ground, according to some estimations.

During the severe drought of 2002, surface flows were meager and some senior surface water users said well-pumpers were taking too much out of the aquifer and not putting enough back in.

In the end, the state’s augmentation requirements were changed, and owners of certain groundwater wells — wells considered “tributary” to stream flows — now have to augment as much as 100 percent for the water they pump out of the ground.

Strohauer said now, with those changes in place, it would cost tens of millions of dollars to own enough augmentation water and take other measures needed to get all of his wells pumping again at full capacity.

Like Strohauer, many other area farmers haven’t been able to get their wells fully pumping again, or at all in some cases.

Strohauer said he isn’t exaggerating when he claims it’s easier to haul his farm equipment and fly to and from his new farmground in New Mexico than it is to grow potatoes near his Weld County home and deal with some of the water rules in Colorado.

In New Mexico, Strohauer has no augmentation requirements. He can pump as much water out of the ground as needed without having to make up for his depletions.

But he doesn’t at all believe that’s the best way to manage groundwater either, he added.

“I’m not against augmentation, by any means,” stresses Strohauer, who, in addition to his groundwater wells, owns senior surface water rights. In many years, though, that surface water isn’t enough to fully irrigate his potato acres, and the groundwater wells are needed to provide immediate, supplemental relief in dry times.

“I agree that we need to be augmenting more than we once were. But I think things have swung way too far the other way.”

Like others in the LaSalle and Gilcrest area, Strohauer has seen his basement flood from high groundwater levels in recent years.

High groundwater has also flooded fields, causing some crops — including some of Strohauer’s potatoes — to rot.

Strohauer and others believe the high groundwater levels have been caused by “overaugmenting” the aquifer since Colorado changed its rules in the mid-2000s, while others believe it stems from the wet years of 2010 and 2011, among other issues.

Complaints of high groundwater levels and the inability to pump wells led to a legislative push last year for a comprehensive study of groundwater activity in the South Platte River basin — a study that’s under way now by the Colorado Water Institute and is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

“Maybe this study will show us something new,” said John Stulp, Gov. John Hickenlooper’s adviser on water, noting that other efforts — including similar groundwater studies and water-cooperative pilot projects — are under way in Colorado. “There’s no doubt ag across the state faces water challenges. We live in a semi-arid region.

“We need to get to a point where we’re making the most beneficial use of what limited water we have, and we’re going a lot of different routes to get there.”

Until that happens, Strohauer is considering planting more acres elsewhere, he said.

Water issues have affected other farmers in Weld County.

Sakata Farms in Brighton, which grows crops across southern Weld County, has reduced its acreage from 4,000 to 2,500 in the past four years, and brought commercial broccoli growing to an end in Colorado when it stopped production of that crop a couple years ago.

Bob Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms, has said water uncertainty is the main reason for cutting back on production.

“You just hate to see this happen, but we have to grow somewhere,” said Strohauer, explaining that it’s taken him years to develop his contracts to sell potatoes to large grocers, and those contracts could come to an end if he falls short on production just one year. “We want to stay to here. I don’t want to see potato acres keep disappearing in Weld County. But it’s getting harder to stay here.”